I'm really puzzled about the popularity of this affiliate platform. Poor tracking and weird behavior, everybody had, at least once, the feeling that Clickbank is shaving sales or has payment processor problems. Today i was quite shocked to see my first real product, sold through another affiliate network , making 15x more sales for 10x more income than any clickbank product i promoted, promoting to the same group (list). Thats just my own sales, didn't wanted to get other affiliates involved in this product just for the sake of comparision. It may me because my product is new (but not unique ofcourse, there are other similar products, and not only on Clickbank) while the product i promoted are older and probably well known, but still, it's quite shocking to see 5 pages of paypal payments compared to 2-10 clickbank sales on similar prices products. And for the past 5 days, had almost 2000 of targeted hops for 1 sale (clickbank), while making on average 1 sale at 100 hops on similar products on Plimus and 3 sales at 100 hops on another affiliate network (for my own product). I really don't know what to really think.
I have products on both Clickbank and Plimus. Nothing is even close to Clickbank believe me. Every network has it's tracking problems, Clickbank is no exception. The Clickbank shaving sales statement is ridiculous. It would be incredibly easy to catch them if they were really doing that. I'm finding it strange that you got way more sales on Plimus, maybe it's just your product. Many of us are doing very well with clickbank. Yes, they're not perfect but they're pretty darn good. I'd say go with whatever works best for you. If that's Plimus.. than go for it.
Yeah, I've had minimal problems with ClickBank. They continue to provide me with monthly affiliate checks too.
I also used to think that it is impossible for clickbank to shave sales because the vendor would notice it right away (members contacting him while he can't find their transaction in his stats). Now don't get me wrong here im not pointing a finger at clickbank at this time but here is a very easy way how clickbank can actually steal sales if they wanted to. If for example clickbank has hundreds of fake affiliate accounts that are actually "clickbank" accounts and not real affiliates then clickbank could easily "steal" sales from affiliates, the vendor would never notice becuase he see's all the sales and has no way of contacting his affiliates anyway so he can never tell which is a real affiliate and which is a "clickbank false affiliate" and affiliates would never see the lost sales on their stats. They can also use this method to shave sales from the vendor that actually were without any affiliate (clean sales) just sticking in a fake affiliate into the sale and taking the affiliate part of the commission. So here you go, how easy it is to steal sales from affiliates and vendors without anyone being able to notice it. I first thought about this idea when i saw double transactions made by the same customer in my vendor account (this happens a lot on CB when a customer buys twice) , the weird thing for me was when i saw at times that the same customer bought from 2 diffrent affiliates?! and one of them was an affiliate i never saw before on my stats . then i started checking other double transactions and i saw it happened more then once so it got me thinking about this whole idea. of course i am not claiming clickbank is actually doing this , it could also be that the same customer bought from 2 different affiliates sites in a matter of a few minutes but if clickbank did no one would ever know and its fairly easy to do.
Personally I think the Plimus platform is put together much better and their tracking and tracking statistics are superior to that of Clickbank's. They do have their occasional system delays and such but no where near the almost daily screw ups of CB. The one thing Plimus needs to work on is their support, though. I've submitted tickets to them that weren't replied to for up to two weeks. So, in that respect they need work but as far as tracking both for hops and sales, Plimus beats CB. I'm not sure why your product would sell better on one platform over another unless people see the Plimus sales page as more of a trustworthy source or something? Not sure.
Its too many time that I heard about Clickbank problems. The most common problem is that you send x traffic that converts well. After some time the same x traffic barelly converts at 1 sale.
That's what I've been experiencing with CB ever since I started using them. Right at the beginning of any campaign I've ever started, the conversion rates are pretty good (1:40-50). Pretty soon, I'm sending the exact same traffic and it's down to 150+ hops and no sales. Of course this could just be chance, but why does it seem to happen with every single campaign and product I've ever promoted? Especially because I use SEO and my sites are starting to rank even higher and higher so I am sending more targeted traffic to these sales pages. If anything the sales should pick up, not slow down. I'm not pointing the finger saying they are shaving sales or whatever, but at the very least there's gotta be a tracking issue going on here.
3 days in my product <test> launch (promoting only to my list) and i got more income than past 3 months of clickbank income (that was 3 months of bi weekly emails aimed at sells, promoting 5-6 very good products) and a shit load of other traffic sources. It will be a pain to redistribute all those redirects from clickbank products to similar products (where exists) on other platforms but anyway is "good bye" clickbank time. But the "cheated" feeling will remain, and the thought i could have earned 10x more not wasting my time with this strange platform. Maybe ClickBank is good for vendors (that can track 100% all their sales and can't be cheated) but for affiliates ... maybe some earn more but im sure they would earn more, using the same product and traffic but on another platform.
Dude, most of the chances that its shaving. Even if its not (and it is, I would bet on it) this thing lasts for a year or two, maybe more. I am not that familiar with the details, but you get the point. Google the clickbank shaving issue and you can find more than enough cases from long ago and if you have common sense you can figure out its not going to end any time soon. (even if it is, would you really agree to work with such a shady network?) Switch to another network, the best advice that I can give you.
Eh idk, I'm not gonna be quick to accuse a big organization like CB to be shaving sales just yet. Tracking issues? Yes, I definitely feel they have bad tracking problems. Also, I get a lot more order form submits than actual sales. I know this is normal, but it goes to show that they are declining a lot of credit cards and transactions that could lead to more sales for us. As far as switching to another platform, I've already started working on that. I just want to build my Clickbank sites up as much as I can and then I'm going to flip them.
Past 14 days had a balance on 15% sales - 85% failed order submit count, coming from some ultra duper incentivized targeted hops. I'm sure those people where genuinely interested in buying something but for whatever reason their credit card got rejected and they were pissed enough not to try a 2nd time with PayPal. But ClickBank is greedy enough not to use some professional payment processor (because of the extra fees) insisting on using their own crappy one, costing me money.
Yeah I think I have twice as many order form submits as I do sales. It really sucks knowing that you're doing everything right and you're even converting the person, but you just don't get the money and they don't get the product they want : /